DRINK THE CONTENTS OF THIS VIAL
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Unfortunately, Lynda Patton’s Drink the Contents of This Vial tries to cut it all of these ways. It has an absurdist setting, a wealthy mental hospital for the “violently, criminally insane” in which three unsupervised inmates share a room decorated with cloud murals and a clock with a sweep second hand and no other. Buster is a former auto mechanic who’s in psychiatric custody because she beat her boss to death. He’d called her a girl, and Buster knows she is and has always been a man. Kitty is an heiress, incarcerated periodically by her husband for having messianic homicide fantasies. When threatened, she acts like a cat–there’s a running gag about her wanting a litter box in her corner of the room. Doc, the third patient, claims to be a psychiatrist–and she just might be, or may once have been. Except for an occasional spurt of obsessive activity, she maintains a clinical posture that offers no clue to what landed her in Whitewall Prison.
The play opens on the day that Kitty is to be evaluated by the board of physicians, who will decide whether she is well enough to be discharged. Doc advises her to play along with the board’s expectations. “Only cooperation brings freedom,” she says. “Conformity you mean! That’s death!” argues Buster, who will do anything to be discharged except admit that she’s female. Kitty clings serenely to her feline destiny: “All women want to be cats, but I am the true cat!”
